Coaching changes are largely the province of bad teams. It makes sense: Change comes when something is not working, and, on average, more things are not going right with bad teams than good teams. Related: duh!

However, good teams can disappoint, too. (That is a rejected 2018-19 official Raptors slogan.) More often than you would think, teams with successful track records make coaching changes with the hope of reaching that elusive next level. And sometimes, it works. Phil Jackson turned the Lakers from a perennial playoff team into a three-peat champion with Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant. The Pistons ditched Rick Carlisle for Larry Brown and became a champion the very next season. Carlisle took a Mavericks team not far removed from a 67-win season and, on his third year on the job, delivered a championship. Sometimes a new coach can be an, if not necessarily the, essential piece.

Not usually, though. More often than not, a team’s ceiling is determined by its...